David Grubbs & Ryley Walker

★★★

A Tap On The Shoulder HUSKY PANTS. CD/DL/LP

Welcome second outing for Chicago guitarists’ “mutual admiration society”.

Whether it’s his formative roles in Squirrel Bait, Bastro and Gastr del Sol or his more recent solo recordings and collaborative work with Loren Connors and Taku Unami, David Grubbs is a guitar legend on the Chicago scene, and Ryley Walker, as he would no doubt admit, is the goofy fan. However, on this, the duo’s second release (following a download-only recording for Cafe Oto’s Takuroku label), he is both collaborator and equal. Moving from slow, dream-like Latin dances of piano and guitar (Accepting Most Plans) and close-miked acoustic plucking (Dorothy Kept) to electric-Miles-style space-wah warble, before ending on the 13-minute churning noise squall of Uglification, A Tap

On The Shoulder is an instrumental guitar album locked in to something profound, intimate and intense, a sonic city tour that begins in picturesque daylight and ends in a 4am basement on the bad side of town.